The reporter then reminded Mr Trump he had played 18 holes of golf with Mr Bloomberg only a few months earlier.

Apology? It’s barely an acknowledgment that there’s an actual thing called “history.”

Its something I’ve found a lot of Conservatives embarrassing themselves with lately.

They stumble on some obscure factoid they feel will be so devastating to the libtards that they quickly incorporate it into their talking points without considering either its inherent contradictions or impossibilities, or what it reveals about their own motives and agendas.

Cooper asked Mr Khan about this, and the latter seemed genuinely dismayed that he had to deal now with this kind of enthusiastically willful ignorance.

“Donald Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said President Obama, who took office in 2009, may be to blame for Capt. Humayun Khan’s death in 2004.”

Your basic sTrumpette. Cute, but not too bright.

In the past we have excluded from voting the nation’s aboriginal population, slaves, women, and those who did not own property. We have further diluted and controlled the vote by systems of electoral representation, Federalism, creative districting and apportionment, and other thinly disguised means of voter suppression. During my own lifetime, we have excluded blacks and the illiterate (or those who have been deemed to be illiterate because of their race). Today, local political satraps are devising ever more clever definitions and stratagems to prevent those from voting who might choose to vote against them, all under the guise of “returning control to local government”. Bullshit. They are determined to give local bullies and businesses power, free from constitutional and legal supervision and constraints. And they have used modern methods of data gathering and analysis to geographically define conditions and populations that can be more easily manipulated and systematically and statistically prevented from casting their ballot, if not totally, then in sufficient numbers to weaken their vote.

No. There is only one way to prevent this. Everybody votes, with no special exceptions or local rules. The only fair way is for everybody to participate equally, with as few restrictions as possible (except for perhaps extreme youth, mental disease, or incarceration). But even those common sense exceptions are susceptible to abuse and must be exercised with caution.

For practical purposes we will probably need some sort of Federalism, a Constitution, representative democracy and republican legislatures (The 4th century model of Athenian Democracy where every citizen votes on every issue is simply not practical, although it may be in the future with sufficient automation and communications).

I agree that a full and complete democracy will make mistakes, but I can’t think of any other system that won’t. As for our own American arrangement, a Federal constitutional republic; it appears to have worked fairly well, but we have had to make many improvements and amendments over its original 18th century configuration. No doubt we will continue to tinker with it, and perhaps not always wisely.

But no one should want to go back to the early 1800s, today that model would be intolerable and unworkable. Beware those who are nostalgic for that time. Underneath the silk stockings, buckle shoes and three-cornered hats they have an agenda, and it is not about your freedom. It only recognizes theirs.

A proposition (that is very unlikely to be taken seriously): the right to vote should be earned, not simply granted. How? By demonstrating awareness. Prior to each national election, every citizen who wants to vote should have to pass a test covering fundamental history and current events. If you can’t name your senators, or identify your state capital, you don’t get to vote. If you can’t find Iran on a map, or name one of the presidents who sat during the Vietnam era, you don’t get to vote. Thus, voting would be limited to those who take a real interest in the world. Those who don’t can contribute best by watching from the sidelines.